Stolen Moments
by Fireglass
Summary: A series of disconnected ficlets about the characters of Supernatural, primarily Sam and Dean. Angst, character deaths, tags and other sundry drabbles to come. Now featuring: FIRE CHANGES EVERYTHING
1. The End

_I can do this_, Sam thinks at first, _I can_.

He hasn't spoken to Dean in going on a year when he teams up with Ellen and Jo and manages to take down Famine [with some aid of demon blood. He doesn't tell anyone that] and Pestilence [they lose Jo in that fight. Then Ellen. By then it's just Sam-all-alone again]. They've split their forces down the middle; Sam knows Bobby and Castiel are with Dean and now he has no one.

Sam hangs himself on a bridge to greet Death. They argue. Sam tells Death he plans to take Lucifer in just to stop the disease of the devil from spreading. _I'm not strong enough_, Sam says, _But if I kill myself when he's inside me, maybe I can win_. Death tells him he's foolish and arrogant if he thinks he can kill himself when an archangel festering in his gut. That's when Sam finds out about the rings, the key, the Cage.

That's when Sam writes a note to Dean, via Bobby, drives to Detroit on a drunk man's suicide mission, and says yes. He brings the small band of hunters he's gathered, the few stupid enough to follow him. Strangers whose names or faces he might've known, a lifetime ago. They go to war, demons against humans, a bloodbath that stains the air with salty copper. Sam drags himself through the carnage to fall at Lucifer's feet.

He says _yes_.

Sam isn't strong enough. He can't do this. Not alone. There's no one to pull him back from the edge, no strength to lean into when hope is gone.

It starts with the Croatoan virus, it starts with _what have I done_, it starts with a quaint cottage Lucifer builds behind Sam's eyes. He takes Sam there and makes tea for both of them and hand-feeds Sam his own intestines on a stick when Sam has to watch the Croat feeding on Bobby's skin; paralyzed Bobby, gun gone, helpless to defend himself. Watches Dean kneel in front of the wheelchair and grab Bobby by the back of his neck and hug him close. Watches Dean put the gun to Bobby's gut and pull the trigger five times.

That's when Lucifer comes out. That's when he steps out of hiding, in Sam's body, in Sam's jacket and boots and Sam's skin but it's not Sam, not really. Dean turns away from Bobby's corpse and just stares and stares, and Sam is terrified because there's no warmth in Sam's eyes. No nothing.

"What happened to you?" Dean asks, bracingly, and Sam realizes from the house in his head that he's probably changed. He's not what Dean remembers. His features might be more like a predator's and his cheekbones might cut and his eyes cut deeper.

"Detroit happened to me." Lucifer spreads his arms wide, a taunt, a dare. "MFEO, Dean. Me and this one."

Dean puts the gun to Sam's head, and pulls the trigger.

Lucifer disappears.

It becomes a game of cat and mouse, Dean chasing him across the country. Sam tries to beat his way free but there's never enough strength, never enough time. Sometimes they watch Dean form the shadows, watch as he turns harder and harder like a diamond shell over a bleeding wound, all that thick scarlet sludge trapped on the other side. Dean bleeds out into his own insides.

Sam screams, every life they take. He screams out loud, every blow Lucifer absorbs, and kills the hunter who crossed paths with him. _Dean, I'm here, I'm right here, see me, hear me, help me, Dean, please_!

The walls of the house start to rot but they're still just as strong. Lucifer doesn't return to the cage inside Sam's head where Sam is hostage. He rules the world with an iron fist. No smiles. No laughter. No music. Just demons everywhere, their stench in Sam's nostrils, his own helpless pleas making him deaf as he batters to break free and save his brother save the world. He knows what Lucifer is waiting for.

Sam watches Dean kill a man with his bare hands. No remorse. Just resolve. Watches the darkest part of John Winchester they always feared, manifesting in spades across Dean's emotionless, pitiless face and his relentless ways.

The atmosphere changes. Something shifts.

The next day, the hunters attack.

Just a ragtag team. Half a dozen soldiers at most. Lucifer leaves the demons in charge and descends to the back garden and that's where Dean finds him; gun in hand, eyes like a dead man's, two graves green as moss, and lifeless. "Found you, you son of a bitch."

"I was never really running, Dean. You just didn't want to see me." Lucifer raises Sam's hand, outstretched. "You gave me this world, Dean. Because you weren't there. You didn't understand the secret. Overlooked it. It's pathetic."

"You killed Sam five years ago," Dean's voice is flat, no inflection around the words. Like he's speaking about a dog that was hit by a car, or a favorite gun that Lucifer stole from him. "You took my brother."

"We've been over this. He gave himself. Willingly. He knew you'd given up on him, so what was left? Sam put the pieces together."

_No, Dean, that's not true, I did this for you, I was trying to save us all—Dean, look at me_!

"_Dean_! _Look at me_!" Sam's voice erupts, desperate, from Lucifer's mouth, and for just a second Dean's defenses fall away. His finger bounces off the trigger. His eyes widen. Sam sees his mouth curl to one side.

"S—Sammy?"

Lucifer has him on the ground in a second, one foot pinning Dean's throat. "Fooled you."

_No, no, Dean! Oh God, you can't do this, you swore, you promised you wouldn't hurt—_

Lucifer's head twitches at another sound, a swish of wet leaves, and with a jerk of his ankle the light goes out of Dean's eyes. He goes limp, with Sam's name the last word to leave his mouth.

And then Lucifer turns, and Dean is behind them. A different Dean. Less rough edges and more vulnerability at the sight of Sam's face, Sam's shape. And before the knowledge spirals through Lucifer and into Sam, Sam already knows this is _his Dean_, somehow.

"Oh. Hello, Dean."

_Touch him, and I swear to God I'll kill you._

Lucifer chuckles, inside the headspace they share. _Well. Aren't you a surprise. _


	2. Calling Sam

Five months, six days, twenty-two hours and forty-four seconds is all it takes, and Dean starts to forget exactly what Sam's face looks like.

It's funny, because this was never an issue even when he was in Hell for forty years. Sam was the wallpaper and Sam was the flooring and Sam was the monster inside the closet of Dean's worst nightmares on the rack. For the last ten years, he saw Sam's face in every body he carved. Every soul he tortured was one less Gordon Walker or Bela Talbot to threaten Sam upstairs.

But in the end it's a jilted lover that pulls the center of gravity from Dean's world and leaves him orbiting helplessly. A witch—and Sam teases him relentlessly that for his personal rap of monster squeezes, Dean slept with a _witch_—casts the curse on Dean after he goes rushing out her door two nights in a row to meet with Sam, who's recovering from a head injury on a water wraith hunt.

They're in the middle of a conversation over a cheeseburger after Sam breaks things off with the unduly obsessed witch. Sam is in the process of telling him that the lead they followed into town points back to Dean's mistress, when Dean's attention pirouettes away from Sam and to an argument at the bar counter. When he looks back, Sam is gone.

At first, he thinks it's a prank. But after he searches the whole bar and runs out into the street calling his brother, some invisible force slams him against the brick siding of the building at that familiar ornery voice says, "Dean, calm down! I'm right here. Can't you see me, man?" And Dean can, he can feel Sam's hot hand on his chest and hear his voice all right, but there's just void space ahead of him.

Killing the witch isn't an easy fix; Bobby can't find a countercurse. Bobby can also see Sam, and Dean can't. No dimpled smile carving into Sam's cheek; no eyes changing color with his mood. So much of Dean's life, he realizes, is painted into the picture of who Sam is. Taking physical cues, reading eyes like reading minds; and suddenly it's gone. For all intents and purposes, the front seat of the Impala could be empty. Sam could be watching him pee. If Sam isn't talking, Dean can't find him.

It's like being blind. Like having a portion of his skin ripped off. He relies on Sam's mutterings and bumping shoulders to tell him where his little brother is, or if he's even in the room. And five months after the fact, Dean realizes that the perfectly preserved image of Sam's scowling face is fading out of his mind's eye.

He flies into a rage, throwing the duffle on the bed, ripping the blanket back hard enough to knock the lamp to the floor. He sits and wraps himself in it like a cocoon and drapes an arm over his eyes and mourns the loss of something like a severed limb or a missing eye. He doesn't move, not even when he feels the weight depressing the foot of his bed.

"Hey." Sam says, quietly, like he's a ghost that's just been waiting in the wings for the opportunity to speak. He might as well be a ghost as far as Dean is concerned, a specter that Dean can touch and hear and even smell, but never see. Always just out of reach. "We're really screwed, huh? That witch pulled a fast one on us."

Dean snorts. "Tell me about it." The silence is almost damp with unhappiness. "Y'know, somebody could drag your ass outta here and I'd never know the difference. I never know if you're five feet or freakin' five miles in front of me."

Dean feels a heavy warmth spread across his shoulder from behind, in the exact shape and size of Sam's mammoth hand. "M'right here, Dean. I'm not going _anywhere_. I guess I'll just be your shadow, like I've always been, y'know?"

Dean rolls over, stares at the empty atmosphere where Sam's head must be. "Can't remember what your ugly mug looks like anymore, Sammy."

Sam chuffs a soft laugh. "Bobby's gotta have a picture somewhere. Don't worry about it. We can get it from him tomorrow."

Tomorrow comes, and it's strangely quiet. Dean doesn't hear Sam moving around while he shaves and showers and packs the duffle. Assuming his brother is asleep, Dean gives the other bed a kick; it draws no reaction. He pats it down and finds it utterly empty.

Facing into the room, Dean calls, "Sam?"

There's no answer.

Dean calls for days, for weeks, a month, a year—a decade.

He never hears Sam's voice or feels his presence again.


	3. Hey Jude

Sam lays down stretched out on the backseat of the Impala, while Dean lounges across the front. The radio is turned down low, an old Beatles' tape whirring from the speakers. The hum is a comfort, as old as they are, older, even, riding high through the blood in their veins. It's their first time relaxing in the car since Dean brought her out of storage; and there's an entire cache of Leviathan heads sinking into the river that floats on by under the bridge.

The bridge that sways just slightly in the breeze, if you focus hard enough and really, truly feel it. Sam feels it in every reawakened muscles in his body, in every fresh breath from his lungs. Lucifer's gone and it's just killing, hunting, their same tragic song written over and over again in blood. Lots of apologies. Lots of_ If I could-s._ But not tonight.

Dean's hand drapes over the back of the bench seat, offering Sam a beer. Sam takes it, and toasts Dean's beer when it appears in his line of sight. He hears Dean swallow, his brother's gravelly voice harmonizing the hum of the song: "Those bodies oughta be sunk in the Puget by now."

Sam laughs at the warm Florida breeze chasing itself through the open window. "I think we're good, this time." He drinks beer, sprawled out flat on his back with one foot on the backseat armrest. "Hey, Dean."

"Yeah, Sammy?"

Sam wants to tell him how good it feels to have Lucifer gone; to feel like he's seeing Dean through clear eyes again. How good it feels to lay in the back of the Impala where he grew up, long legs in cramped spaces, wild eyes and untamed hair against a cold window, drawing shapes in the steam of his breath. He wants to tell Dean _Thank you for finding a way to fix me,_ but he thinks he'd never be able to say it enough. He rolls his head sideways and his line of sight is filled with a tiny toy soldier in an ashtray.

"Sam." Dean prompts, finally.

Sam thumbs the army man's battered helmet. Like the other soldiers in this car, he's seen his days of triumph and lately, taken more knocks and collected dust. But, like the rest of them, he keeps marching on.

"Remember when I said I felt good? After that Osiris gig?"

"Don't remind me," Dean says, but there's a smile in his voice.

"I mean it this time."

The world is still broken, but, Sam thinks, at least they have this; beers in the backseat of home, just two toy soldiers weathering the storms of life. He thinks, even if Bobby's gone, and Castiel is half-gone as well, even if the world is in the toilet and the Leviathans are toggling the flush, at least he has Dean again and Lucifer in his rearview mirror.

"Yeah," Dean says, finally. "Think we're gonna be okay."

And he turns up 'Hey Jude' on the radio.


	4. Ugly Sweater

The abandoned house smelled saccharine-sweet of mold, and chilly, like frost; the way a man's lungs felt when he ran up a hill without stopping to breathe, cold metal lining his lungs with every fitful burst of air dragged in and out, in and out.

It was snowing, two days until Christmas, and this was the easiest case they'd taken by far in weeks, if not months. A simple werewolf hunt, and the thing had been feeding off of livestock in the country rather than on the human hearts it needed to sustain life. Weakened and hungry, their prey was bound to make a mistake. Sam and Dean Winchester would be cut loose and dried out and home to Bobby's in time for the Christmas turkey he had insisted on pain of death that they help him consume.

They moved into the house in flanking positions, guarding each other's six; bundled up against the cold, for once, in ugly hats and sweaters under their jackets that Bobby had also heaped on them. Ugly, but warm as all get out, and Minnesota winters were unforgiving. They were lucky to have this much protection, by Dean's estimation, against the elements. And the utter ridiculousness of their outfits was enough to liven the mood in its own right.

"Dude, Sam, you look like the poster child for a bad sweater party," Dean teased, making a sweep of the kitchen with his wrists crossed, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other.

"How about you bite me? Yours is worse," Sam objected. "Chartreuse has gotta be the most hideous color known to man."

"God, you're such a girl. Next thing I know you'll be telling me my boots don't match this thing." Dean plucked at the sweater, lips pursing out; he had to admit, it was pretty revolting. "At least it's got some color to it, though. Y'know, it's growing on me. Yours is like…oatmeal colored."

"Shut up, is not. And you're right, your boots don't match the sweater." Sam nodded to the staircase that branched off from the kitchen. "I'm gonna take a look around up there. Heads up."

"Be careful. Wanna get you home in one piece for Christmas."

"Joy to the world," Sam's white-toothed smile flashed in the darkness. "Just stay alert." He moved for the stairs, boots tapping almost soundlessly up the rotting wooden planks. Dean made it his mission to case the entire downstairs, a series of five branching rooms and a root cellar that, upon inspection, proved itself empty. He was clumping back up to ground floor when a yell split the frosty air, rattling the ice-laced windows.

Dean was running, winging around the corner to the stairs in a few long bowlegged strides, and that was when he saw Sam rocketing down the steps with the fully-turned werewolf slavering on his heels. Dean brought his sights swinging up, but the werewolf changed trajectory when Sam flew around the corner into the dining room, ahead of Dean; it slammed him off his feet and into the wall.

At the crack of his skull on plaster, Dean's worldview tipped into a steep vertigo plunge. Ignoring a pasty feeling like blood on his skull, he rolled to his elbows and scrambled for the gun, where it had clattered from his fingertips and flown into the wall. He heard a bark of gunfire over his head—Sam, taking aim—and a horrible, thirsty snarl. Something unbearably hot and sharp needled into his shoulder, trying to wrench him onto his back.

Dean grappled hold of the gun, flipped over into a mess of fuzzy gray, and fired.

His brain registered several things at once.

The hand on his shoulder was just a hand. There was a burly, half-furred body with elongated claws, jerking and twitching in a death spasm at the base of the stairs.

And Sam was kneeling beside him, one hand clapped to the dark scarlet blossom of blood from his heart, spreading in a terrible thick stain across the repulsive sweater Bobby had given him to keep warm on the hunt.

Sam's shocked eyes found Dean's as the gun dropped from Dean's suddenly numb fingers. Innocent, desperate eyes asked a silent question, screaming loud in the breathless pause: _Why_?

Sam toppled, and Dean grabbed for him, screaming his name: "Sam, Sam, oh God—_Sammy_!"

And knowing it was already too late; couldn't call back the bullet.

Couldn't change what he had done.


	5. Winchester Pride

It ends in Cold Oak, and somehow Sam finds this ironic.

They're sequestered in an old cowboy-style church, the bell tower gonging where the rope wraps around pulpit and Dean's back snags against it with every motion. His fingers are flying, trying to staunch the spray of blood from Sam's brachial artery, but Sam knows it's too late. Knows he has seconds, minutes if he's lucky, left to live.

They've been pinned down by hunters of all things, turned against them by a bounty the Leviathans proposed: a million dollars square to the hunter who could bring Sam and Dean Winchester's heads on a plate. The price to pay for finding solid information on the plans of the monster invaders, and how to stop them; but that intel was already in the capable if unorthodox hands of Crowley, Meg, and Castiel. All that was left for Sam and Dean was the same breathingspace and the glances shared over Sam's lifeblood sopping Dean's fingers.

"Hang in there, Sammy." Dean grunts, tying the third tourniquet on Sam's bicep. Sam knocks his head back against the pew, fighting the blackness that creeps at the corners of his eyes.

"What's the point? We drew 'em off. Cass and the others got away. _Dean_," Sam insists, pushing his brother's hand down. "Look at me. This is it. It's over for us. The best thing we can do is try to make sure these guys aren't around to raise hell for our friends."

He's surprised to see that Dean's eyes are wet; less surprised to find that his are, too. He's only been breathing air free of Lucifer's sickening stench for a few months. He's only tasted food without blood or writhing maggots in it long enough to remember he used to like salads, before. He's only just started to relearn Dean without seeing the illusion of his brother exploding into gory soup in the middle of a conversation.

But this is enough, Sam thinks; Dean's hand on his shoulder and Dean's hand fisting in the front of his jacket, giving him a shake. "Sammy, you sure?"

"I'm sure. Gimmie my gun." Sam stretches out his hand and Dean scoops up the firearm from the floor; it was Dean's, once, silver-plated and with a kick that had nearly dislocated Sam's shoulder when he'd first fired it at age eleven. Its weight is a steady comfort in Sam's grasp when Dean presses it into his palm and curls his fingers around the grip.

"Keep it steady. Just follow my lead."

"Always," Sam huffs, still fighting for control over his failing body. He's stunned beyond measure when Dean grabs the back of his neck and pulls him close, and with his forehead resting against the curve of Dean's shoulder Sam can feel Dean's tears on his collar.

"M'proud of you, Sammy," Dean whispers. "Mom and dad would be, too."

Sam's scared to die; but he thinks that Heaven won't be much different from this. Just without the pain, without the running. He nods and Dean pushes him back to arm's length, taking in the sight of him with the love only a brother could muster.

"Ready?" Dean asks, rising and offering a hand, and Sam grabs Dean's forearm and lets himself be pulled up. They take opposite side of the door, listening to their allies-turned-enemies milling outside, plotting their next move. It's clear from the assortment of options they hurl back and forth that they don't expect to be attacked; and that they think they'll be facing the older Winchester alone, perhaps standing guard over the dead body of the younger.

Sam looks across the space between them, meets Dean's eyes for the last time. Dean winks. "Same time?"

Sam tightens his numb fingers around the gun. "Same time."

Dean straightens. "See you on the other side."

The last smile he flashes Sam's way is damn near electric, a shockwave on Sam's rubbery bones, and hell if he doesn't think he can see Heaven just on the other side of his brother's wise, wild eyes.

Dean kicks the church door wide, and the eruption of gunfire is the windstorm of a final page turning, the end of a legend as the brave sons of a fallen hunter step into the sunlight.


	6. Fire Changes Everything

The part that hurt the worst, for John, was that it wasn't anyone's fault.

Sam died just shy of his tenth birthday. A young life, snuffed, with absolutely no warning. They returned to the motel room, John and Dean, from a supply run and some target practice and Sam was curled upon the bed. When Dean sat beside him and grabbed his shoulder and shook him, he didn't wake up; or so the story went. John was in the shower, at the time, hair plastered to his forehead, and all he heard was his eldest son screaming for his daddy like he hadn't since he was four years old.

The doctor declared Sam dead from two minutes into the ER. An aneurysm in his brain, a ticking time bomb that they couldn't have predicted. No one could have stopped it. After Mary's violent death all those years ago, it was almost, strangely, too peaceful. There was nothing to hunt or chase or kill. It was just a tiny body on a funeral pyre, the smell of burning flesh a vivid callback to a November second when their lives had first gone up in flames.

Fire, John found, changed everything.

And maybe because of that—maybe because he had nothing to sink his teeth into, no revenge scheme to cook up or bad guy to kill—Dean slipped away.

John noticed it gradually at first; Dean was shut up like a steel trap. Slept with Sam's pillow, wouldn't throw out Sam's duffle bag full of Sam's clothes, Sam's books, shampoo, trinkets. Dean fell asleep with one hand wrapped around the amulet at his throat every night, eyes squeezed shut and lips moving like he was singing Sam back to him across some endless reach.

Dean stopped talking; he followed John's orders mechanically, valuable backup on a hunt but a man still who stared at the world with eyes that had lost their life. The light had gone out of Dean's world, gone out of his gaze. The only time he ever seemed to show a spark of life was when John was in danger; like there was maybe one thing in the world left that was worth saving, and Dean was determined to do the job right, this time.

But Dean wouldn't talk about Sam, and that was the crux; John had been a Marine, had seen his buddies in the Corps shut down after an IED took out an entire squad right before their eyes. Chunks of bodies and ropy blood slung across sand and seashore, and they'd just retreat into themselves. As Dean did.

John broached the subject, once, over dinner in a fifties-style diner in Milwaukee. Turned to Dean in the booth and said, "Dune, you gotta talk about this some time. It's gonna eat you alive." When there was no response, he added, gently. "Sammy wouldn't want you to—"

"What the hell do you care?" Dean snapped back, almost savage; his hair was growing long, long tips on the nape of his neck and a fringe around his head. He never bothered to cut it anymore, and the appearance made him seem wild, a stocky shell of John's boy. "You never gave a shit about Sam when he was alive, so now that he's dead you think you get a right to talk about him?

The rift that opened that night stayed between them after that; because in a way, Dean was right John had done his best to balance his militant vantage point with the love of a father. But he knew he'd been hard on his kids, that he'd let them both down. And running out of that shower to find Sam sprawled limp and lifeless across Dean's knees had been the most horrifying moment of his life, Mary not withstanding. Because of the stillness of it all; and Sam was never still. Always cracking jokes at Dean or hanging over the back of the seat or flipping through a book.

But in spite of all that, John hadn't known his youngest son; what Sam would've wanted if a funeral pyre wasn't an option. Burial, or something better, like having his body sent out to sea? If Mary had never died, what would Sam have wanted from his life—and what then, even, with her still dead? What were his dreams?

Dean stopped eating almost altogether; he thinned out, bones puckering under skin stretched too thin. Dark shadows appeared under his eyes; at night, they both slept in beds alone where Dean had always had the small warmth of Sam tucked under his ribcage. John pretended to sleep through the bouts of Dean waking up with Sam's name in his mouth, half a sob that Dean muffled into the pillow.

Sam's smell faded. Sam's dietary needs no longer decided their rest stops. They hunted hard and fast, throwing themselves into case after case. Ignored calls from Bobby. Stayed as far away from each other as they could get in the cramped quarters of Impala and motel room, Impala and motel room. John pretended not to notice that Dean started smoking after a hard hunt. Or that his private stash of alcohol was depleting much faster than he could touch it. Dean started sleeping all through the night, but he woke up hungover.

It was his eyes that scared John; they were the same glassy, hunted eyes as he'd seen in Sam's slack dead face. Dean was keeping Sam to himself like a prayer, a promise, a precious memory; and he was a dead man walking for it, taking slow steps down into the grave to join his brother. But every time John opened his mouth to broach the subject, Dean was give him a glare so venomous that John receded.

It changed on a hunt in Seattle; they hadn't spoken in two weeks, John and Dean, because Dean's response to everything was _I don't care_, and they knew each other well enough in the field that verbal communication was of no use. They were hunting a banshee and when her call came to John, his defenses were down; it was the first year anniversary of Sam's death, and he was drunk, and he was senseless.

So he got in the car, and he drove.

He made it to her woodland bog, climbed out, followed the enticing melody into the forest; but as he walked, it changed. The call changed. It wasn't music anymore, it was a young voice, a stubborn boy's voice: _Dad, come on, it's not that hard—why can't you find me_?

Tears bloomed in John's eyes; because in just a year, he'd forgotten that voice. "Sammy?"

"Come and get me, dad, come on!" A small dark shape flitted through the trees, brown hair flopping, and John started running, boots smacking over the peaty soil, arms flushing foliage out of his way.

He didn't know how far he ran, chasing Sam's laughter in the darkness, before he realized he was calling his youngest son's name, over and over again, with his breaths rasping in his lungs. He reached the top of a wooded precipice, looking down. And there was Sam below him, beatific smile at the bottom and his eyes bright.

"C'mon, dad!"

Something smashed into John form the side, throwing him to his knees, and a heavy weight landed on top of him. He barely felt the sting when Dean's fist cracked into his cheek, splitting skin. "Are you nuts? What, were you just gonna walk over the edge?"

"Dean—?" John began, thickly.

Dean wasn't hearing it; he grabbed John by the front of his leather jacket and hauled him up so that their faces, angular noses, were inches apart. "Sam's already gone, dad! You gonna leave me, too?"

John stared at him, seeing the fury, and the fear, and the passion in Dean's eyes. Seeing that Dean had failed, and didn't understand how, or why; protecting Sammy had been his life, his responsibility, his only _everything _since _forever. _

John pulled his gun, aimed it toward Sam, there, over the edge of the cliff, and pulled the trigger.

They returned to the hotel room together, and Dean was shut up and silent again, but a glaring silence now instead of a vacant one. John showered and hit the bed hard, ready to face whatever nightmares the sight and sound of Sam would bring on tonight.

He didn't sleep for long; a frantic, guttural chafing sound woke him within the hour. Pawing his hand over his eyes, John sat up, and caught Dean's outline by the wall. He was sitting with books scattered around him, thick, fat, heavy volumes from the library down the street; and with his head leaned back against the wall, Dean was sobbing into his fist, tears creasing over his dusty face.

John threw the covers off and crossed the room, kneeling beside his body. "Deano. Hey." When Dean didn't acknowledge hi, eyes squeezing shut, John glanced at the reading material. His heart sank when he saw page after page on aneurysms, causes and effects, diagrams emblazoning Sam's last moment alive into Dean's eyes.

John toed the nearest book shut and moved it aside so he could move forward; he grabbed the back of Dean's neck and tugged Dean's face into his shoulder. And for once, Dean let him, succumbed to it, his hands fisting in John's t-shirt. He cried like he was five, not fifteen; finally cried for his baby brother, finally released to the knowledge that there really was nothing he could've done. Sam had been doomed from birth, from the moment that aneurysm had begun to form.

"We're gonna make it, son," John murmured into Dean's hair. "We're gonna make it."

Dean nodded brokenly, his hands spasming and loosening their hold.

John pushed him back, brushed the too-long hair from Dean's eyes; which, now that he really looked, bore a resemblance to Sam's. There was a lot John saw now that he was really looking. And even if it was too late—well, it still wasn't too late.

"C'mere. We're gonna get you something to eat," John pulled Dean up to his feet but kept an arm around his shoulders. "And I want you to tell me about Sam, Dean. Tell me everything."

Dean cuffed his nose with the sleeve of his sweater. "He ever tell you his dream was to go to Stanford?"


End file.
